Increasing the SubD level of an object does not increase details unless the object has an HD morph.

I'm more of a Carrara user than Daz studios I have to see the compatibility of the legacy morph pack in carrara from a Carrara user perspective.  Thanks for the information though @vrba79

Did you try to restart the program?

Daz does a lot of things in the background, one of them being treating objects/scenes/etc named the same as the same object. Like for instance I mess around in the Geometry Editor with a figure, then reload the scene without saving any changes, I then notice the changes were kept. Daz logged the changes somewhere and then applied them to the new scene. If you close the program and restart it then said log will be erased meaning the changes won't transfer again.

So modify the copy accordingly, save the changes (do not use brackets, use an entirely different name to save the copy), close Daz, start Daz, then you should see the original unchaged and he copy changed.

Hi and thanks to everyone for the valuable input. Oh, and also happy new year.

Regarding my purchase of a better rendering rig, I'm now down to basically two options. Although I would like to stick to my MacBook Pro, an eGPU is not a valid option as there is no proper driver support especially for Nvidia cards. In addition more and more plugins tend to be windows only. So I might have to make the jump for windows anyhow. So my options are:

# Windows notebook

I'm thinking of a HP Omen gaming notebook or anything similar. There should be enough options in the $2.000-$2.500 space I guess. Regarding the specs I'm looking for
CPU: i7 or i9 - most notebooks seem to come with i7 still
GPU: RTX 2080 with 8 GB - no Max-Q for said reasons
RAM: 16 GB or 32 GB if possible
HDD: 512 GB or 1 TB SSD and 1 or 2 TB HDD
15" or 17" screen
My open questions:
- Is a HD resolution sufficient? Some notebooks come with 4K. Does windows support something like retina. And does DAZ studio run in a higher resolution. On the MacBook DAZ studio does not yet make real use of retina thus the interface is rather pixelated.
- Would it make sense to have a runtime with the data folder (all the morphs are IMO loaded once a Genesis figure is put in the scene) on the SSD or would it be sufficient to have a small SSD with windows and the main DAZ Studio program and everything else on the internal HDD. Should still be faster as an USB-connected external drive, right?

# Streaming
As some have suggested streaming as a valid option, I'm thinking about getting a desktop instead and stream it to my Mac via the internal WLAN. Don't have any experience with such a setup so there are a lot of questions regarding that option:
- Do I need an external monitor for initial setup of the machine?
- What is the proper software for remote controlling a windows desktop from my Mac?
- Are there solutions which integrate file transfer like to view the rendering process on the Mac, have the rendering done on the desktop and later save to the Mac or would it make more sense to save to a NAS which can be accessed both from the windows machine as well as from the Mac?
- Is there any lag or should that not be a problem giving a fast internal WLAN.
- And of course: What about the configuration. Should I even opt for more VRAN on the desktop RTX? Think 11 GB are affordable. The 24 GB version is costing more that a complete notebook :-(

Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.

A fast morph for the drapes would be very easy to implement yourself though.

New sales offers up and running.

Thanks! At least it's a starting point for the pose, then you can move things manually to try and mimick the G8 pose. 

I know there are a lot of pose converters for turning G1, 2, 3 into G8. But I'm kind of going in the opposite direction. 

https://www.daz3d.com/skinchangers

I would use this and morph it a bit to what you want, it have good stuff and Gen3 = G3/8 will work fine.

But its not on sale and indeed the ratman for 7$ is cheap xD

But do you need the rat that much? :D I checked also all other stores... its the only rat figure^^.... unless you want a normal rat :)

But this skinchanger werwolf have a lot morph options :)

 

"Skinchangers Wolves Tail:

• Morphs
• Pose Controls"

So you can maybe texture the Tail pinky.

 

Edit: https://www.daz3d.com/skinchangers-female also with tittys :p

thank you . Great advice!

I'm working with a collaborator, and they want a rat. So that's why I am thinking about purchasing the Street Rat.

I already own Werwulf for Genesis 8 Male. He's really cool too.

I love Genesis 1, using Genesis Generation X2!

I have The Girl 4, and she has all those wacky/awesome expressions - Aiko 4 does too, so I put those on this character too, along with all of the expressions I bought for V4 and Genesis 2 - and that's now added to all of them that I bought for Genesis 1 - so this girl (Stylized Superhero character of my wife!) is Very Emotive!

GenX2 also allowed me to give Genesis 1 the more detailed female shapes from Genesis 2 Female, since I got the Genesis 2 addon for it.

Now it doesn't matter, Male, Female... if there's a morph I need to use, I give it to my character.

In Carrara, when we save a Genesis figure as a Carrara file, we can no longer add morphs to that particular figure. We can cop all of the shape dial setting over to a fresh Genesis that has more morphs, but the one we save becomes locked. I use this to my advantage. I have a master copy of all of my Genesis morphs on my desktop, and I update that any time I buy new morphs. When I make a character, like Rosiie 5 here, I go into the data > DAZ3D > Genesis > Base > Morphs folder, and delete all of the morphs I don't want polluting her dials selection - like monsters, male stuff, whatever.

So this character only has dials that I want her to have. Yeah... there's a LOT of them, but they're just whatI want! :)

Meh I have to do something on Genesis is part of my bucketlist this year.   Thanks for sharing that info Dartabeck and a happy new year !

Genesis 1 has a lot of anime style options. Hiro 5 and Hitomi are definitely something you want to invest in, if you go the Genesis route.

Too heavy in Carrara for my PC but once I get a better system I'll try it.

It'll be a good investment if you ever do, and thanks to how Genesis works, you can import Aiko3/Hiro3 clothes and hair over to D|S via one of the legacy morph packs.

Thanks! At least it's a starting point for the pose, then you can move things manually to try and mimick the G8 pose. 

I know there are a lot of pose converters for turning G1, 2, 3 into G8. But I'm kind of going in the opposite direction. 

https://www.daz3d.com/skinchangers

I would use this and morph it a bit to what you want, it have good stuff and Gen3 = G3/8 will work fine.

But its not on sale and indeed the ratman for 7$ is cheap xD

But do you need the rat that much? :D I checked also all other stores... its the only rat figure^^.... unless you want a normal rat :)

But this skinchanger werwolf have a lot morph options :)

"Skinchangers Wolves Tail:

• Morphs
• Pose Controls"

So you can maybe texture the Tail pinky.

Edit: https://www.daz3d.com/skinchangers-female also with tittys :p

I tested it out and for me I can’t decide. Both Owen and Boyd are pretty muscular and buff so the added creases and dents are hard to discern. There is almost no benefit that I can see for regular poses where the character is just standing. Some of the most changes I can see are in the tummy above the elements. That morph when applied seemed to affect the elements by pushing them out a bit  more than normal.

 In bending scenes I can see more definition to the knee caps. 

I don’t see anything too different though and I’m not sure it is worth 20 dollars. Maybe on a character with little definition to begin with it might make it look more real. But a few extra creases on my guys are like wrinkles on an elephant.

I love Genesis 1, using Genesis Generation X2!

I have The Girl 4, and she has all those wacky/awesome expressions - Aiko 4 does too, so I put those on this character too, along with all of the expressions I bought for V4 and Genesis 2 - and that's now added to all of them that I bought for Genesis 1 - so this girl (Stylized Superhero character of my wife!) is Very Emotive!

GenX2 also allowed me to give Genesis 1 the more detailed female shapes from Genesis 2 Female, since I got the Genesis 2 addon for it.

Now it doesn't matter, Male, Female... if there's a morph I need to use, I give it to my character.

In Carrara, when we save a Genesis figure as a Carrara file, we can no longer add morphs to that particular figure. We can cop all of the shape dial setting over to a fresh Genesis that has more morphs, but the one we save becomes locked. I use this to my advantage. I have a master copy of all of my Genesis morphs on my desktop, and I update that any time I buy new morphs. When I make a character, like Rosiie 5 here, I go into the data > DAZ3D > Genesis > Base > Morphs folder, and delete all of the morphs I don't want polluting her dials selection - like monsters, male stuff, whatever.

So this character only has dials that I want her to have. Yeah... there's a LOT of them, but they're just whatI want! :)

Meh I have to do something on Genesis is part of my bucketlist this year.   Thanks for sharing that info Dartabeck and a happy new year !

Genesis 1 has a lot of anime style options. Hiro 5 and Hitomi are definitely something you want to invest in, if you go the Genesis route.

Too heavy in Carrara for my PC but once I get a better system I'll try it.

I am still searching for a realistic (and perhaps in a toon) German shepherd figure for the G8 dog.  There is a pose pack geared for law enforcement, which includes the G8 male and female, and G8 dog, but there is no morph or matte for a German shepherd, or for a  bloodhound.  The Millennium German sheipherd doesn't pose well, using the G8 posing.

Thanks for your help!

Debbie

I love Genesis 1, using Genesis Generation X2!

I have The Girl 4, and she has all those wacky/awesome expressions - Aiko 4 does too, so I put those on this character too, along with all of the expressions I bought for V4 and Genesis 2 - and that's now added to all of them that I bought for Genesis 1 - so this girl (Stylized Superhero character of my wife!) is Very Emotive!

GenX2 also allowed me to give Genesis 1 the more detailed female shapes from Genesis 2 Female, since I got the Genesis 2 addon for it.

Now it doesn't matter, Male, Female... if there's a morph I need to use, I give it to my character.

In Carrara, when we save a Genesis figure as a Carrara file, we can no longer add morphs to that particular figure. We can cop all of the shape dial setting over to a fresh Genesis that has more morphs, but the one we save becomes locked. I use this to my advantage. I have a master copy of all of my Genesis morphs on my desktop, and I update that any time I buy new morphs. When I make a character, like Rosiie 5 here, I go into the data > DAZ3D > Genesis > Base > Morphs folder, and delete all of the morphs I don't want polluting her dials selection - like monsters, male stuff, whatever.

So this character only has dials that I want her to have. Yeah... there's a LOT of them, but they're just whatI want! :)

Meh I have to do something on Genesis is part of my bucketlist this year.   Thanks for sharing that info Dartabeck and a happy new year !

Genesis 1 has a lot of anime style options. Hiro 5 and Hitomi are definitely something you want to invest in, if you go the Genesis route.

I do hope that future base generations return to morph injections into the base, similar to V4, rather than loading everything as is the current situation.

Loading the base G8 figures takes several minutes for me. I assume this is because of the Genesis method of loading everything. And I often run out of memory rendering on my 4GByte graphic card. How much of that is due to loaded morphs that I'm not using?

I would be happy with a morph injection loading system but I can see why Daz wouldn't want it. The current system is easier for beginners and Daz are keen to pull in new users. What I would like is a way to easily remove morphs and put them back again when you need them. Maybe a plugin that can identify the files used by a character preset or a set of morphs and move them to a backup directory, them move them back when you want them. Is it possible to do this? Is there enough information avaialable about how Daz Studio works to attempt it?

Windows reserves some Gfx RAM on any given card, irrespective of it being used for video monitors or just sat there - at least if they are Gforce cards. W10 reserves more RAM.

I do hope that future base generations return to morph injections into the base, similar to V4, rather than loading everything as is the current situation.

Loading the base G8 figures takes several minutes for me. I assume this is because of the Genesis method of loading everything. And I often run out of memory rendering on my 4GByte graphic card. How much of that is due to loaded morphs that I'm not using?

I would be happy with a morph injection loading system but I can see why Daz wouldn't want it. The current system is easier for beginners and Daz are keen to pull in new users. What I would like is a way to easily remove morphs and put them back again when you need them. Maybe a plugin that can identify the files used by a character preset or a set of morphs and move them to a backup directory, them move them back when you want them. Is it possible to do this? Is there enough information avaialable about how Daz Studio works to attempt it?

So Much Great Stuff - So Render Some of IT!!!!!

Xerr?

Dogs?  Cats?  Mice?  Birds?  Fish?  Dinos?  Custom critters?  I know you have them in your content libraries, or can make some in Carrara.  Lets see them!

Many of our four legged (or 6 or 8 or 2 or ? legged) friends pose significant weightmapping problems, especially if the shoulder rises deep in the torso.  Although your task is merely to render a critter of your choice in any style you want, would be happy if folks discussed challenges and solutions to issues related to the joints of posed figures.  Hiding in clothes?  Hiding by angle?  Creating joint morph? (Really?)  Adjusting weightmaps?  (Really?)  Hiding with motion blur?  Not hiding?  Everything is welcome.

** Anticipating questions - anything and everything counts as a creature if you want it to.  

$10 gift card

Deadline - Valentines Day (February 14th)

EDIT:  Postwork allowed, but please attach both the straight Carrara render and the final postwork result.

Most focus on the hardware, but software tricks can also make HUGE difference. In order of usefulness:

- Edit > Preferences > Interface > Display Optimization -- set to Best. This one is so important assuming you're using a decent gpu. It just makes Daz SO much more responsive when navigating in Texture Shaded mode.

- Avoid transferring morphs between generations unless absolutely necessary. It cannot be understated how NICE it is to have a figure load quickly. What good is a powerful machine when the software itself is unresponsive. Avoiding this 'pitfall' is helpful in keeping things fast. Granted there are workarounds (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/372136/how-to-load-a-character-faster-solved-with-a-workaround#latest), but they're clunky and it's simply easiest to avoid altogether if you can.

- Avoid 'too much' content. This goes hand-in-hand with previous suggestion. Even if you don't transfer morphs, if you buy too many for a figure, you can end up in a similar situation. Other content also impacts speed. If you buy too many poses (or any category), you run into limits on smart content being able to even 'show' you everything you've purchased. You'll see something like 1-814+ with no good way to access the remainder. This impacts speed/efficiency of workflow.

- Scene optimizer is useful if something just won't fit on your GPU. Great product.

It could be a complete coincidence, but I didn't notice much of a slowdown until the new G3 to G8 character transfer scripts came out. Once I started using those, and transferred a few characters, my G8F's have been laggy. Loading a blank G8F in a blank scene isn't so bad, but once I apply a character to it and then start posing it gets slow. And if I ever need to zero the character pose or clear the scene I might as well go get a coffee. I can't imagine it's any fault of the character transfer tools themselves, it's just right around that same time everything started to get slow. Maybe it's because I now have all those extra transferred G3 to G8 morphs in the background. 

One thing I don't understand is why does loading one character require the loading of -all- the morphs in the library? Say if one character uses 15 morphs and you have 200 installed, why is not just loading the 15 morphs it needs? I won't pretend to know the mechanics behind the scenes of how things work but it feels like that's how it should be and it would save with load times to boot. I'm entirely too lazy to start shuffling my morphs around and then moving them back if I need them. I have a hard enough time remembering things I've bougt in the past as it is. I'd likely just move them and forget them completely. 

 

I noticed this too with Zev0's xtransfer. I deleted the xtransfer folder with all the transferred morphs and the lag has gone. I made a backup of the xtransfer folder and will move the xtransfer folder back when I need those morphs.

 

In my case it's definitely not a case of too many characters and morph packs. I own only a handful characters for either G8F and G8M and work with many custom morphs that I import separately for each figure.

In that case, maybe it really does have something to do with those G3 morphs being transferrred to G8. I'm not trying to blame those specific mod authors because they are providing a service many people want, myself included, but there might be something Daz itself doesn't like about those morphs. I've only transferred a handful of characters (Victoria, Ophelia, and Olympia as well as a custom dial-spun character) and that was absolutely the jumping point for when Daz slowed to a crawl for me. 

i sended a pm for you

I responded to your PM.

Ellessarr said:

here a video about how to add corrective morphs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvBpanNO5SM&list=FLnpaZFMQAwPP4z267hGDXPQ&index=2&t=

The video above doesn't go into a lot of detail how this is set up. Here's a bit more information.

First create an Animation Blueprint. Name it something like Post_Process_Anim

(See Head_FWD.png below)

Start with an Input Pose node.  This will look at whatever pose your character is making.

Create a Bone Driven Controller node and apply these settings.

Source Bone = The bone you want to check the rotation of to drive the morph

Source Component = Which axis of that bone do you want to check the rotation of to drive the morph

Remap Source Checked

Source Range = What range of motion will drive the morph. Example - if the bone's x rotation moves from 0 to -27 then the morph be applied from 0 (no influence) to 1 (full influence)

Destination Mode = Morph Target

Parameter Name = Paste the name of the morph you will be driving.

Connecting the Bone Driven Controller node to the Input Pose node should automatically generate the Local to Component node.

(See Head_BCK.png below)

You will likely need to have one node for forward rotations and one node for backward rotations.

Do this for each bone axis you need a morph target for.

(See End.png below)

Connecting the last Bone Driven Controller node to the Output Pose node will generate the Component To Local node for you.

(See Enable_Post_Processing.png below)

Once this is set up go to your mesh's Asset Details panel. Under Skeletal Mesh - Post Process Anim Blueprint select the animation blueprint you just created.

You may have to enable it on the right or from the yellow bar at the bottom.

The end result should be that as you animate you character these morph targets will be automatically applied to you mesh.

 

Edit: Tried to be more clear

thanks!!!!

Sent you a PM

yea i saw it, thanks!!!

The problem is indeed not G8F herself but a morph file saved with non-zero default value. It's most probably not the morphs from your screenshots directly but rather a "control slider" for a character which triggers those morphs.

You need to identify this slider and correct the default value, then re-save that morph asset.

Oh, thank you soooo much for your brilliant clue) I found that character's morph and reinstalled it!

That's very good indeed. I may be wrong but the scapulas seem to lack some definition especially for retraction, that may be needed for less muscular characters.

Modified the scapula movement a little. It is indeed more visible in the female character because of lack of muscle mass: https://imgur.com/a/cEvnEvN

The traps cannot be adjusted because the Normal Map Symmetry tool severely messes up on the upper body and I can't make the adjustement otherwise. I hope they fix it in the upcoming version.

Modified the knee joint a lot. Now everything looks more natural with the calf muscles even squishing to some extent. All done with zero morph targets/blendshapes.